You can take this for what it is
worth, I just thought it was interesting
enough to pass along.

E N Q U I R E R L O C A L N E W S C O V
E R A G E

Monday, June 26, 2000

Blue Jacket wasn't white man, DNA suggests

Shawnee chief's family wants him recorded
as Indian

By Sara J. BennettThe Cincinnati Enquirer

Descendants of celebrated Shawnee war
chief Blue Jacket for years have fought
the story that he really was a white man
who started life as Marmaduke Van
Swearingen.

Now, they have ammunition that could prove
more powerful than genealogy charts or
historical documents. A Wright State
biologist studying DNA from the Blue
Jacket and Van Swearingen families has
shown that Blue Jacket and Marmaduke Van
Swearingen probably weren't the same
person.

Blue Jacket descendants herald the news as
a breakthrough. They want the chief, who
in the 1790s led the Shawnee against Army
forces trying to crush Indian resistance
in Ohio, to be remembered as an American
Indian.

They also want their own legacies
restored.

“The white man has always relished the
idea that the great chief Blue Jacket was
actually their white chief,” said Robert
Denton Blue Jacket, a Tulsa, Okla.,
descendant who provided DNA samples.

“Being an Indian is not a matter of your
blood, it's a matter of your heart — it's
your cultural identity, and that's what
was so sad about this whole myth. It has
robbed so many people of not

only their blood, but their cultural
identity.”

Mr. Blue Jacket and other descendants plan
on using the new DNA evidence to try to
force changes in works that perpetuate the
Blue-Jacket-as-white-man story. One target
is the outdoor Blue Jacket theatrical
production performed each summer in Xenia.
It recently was included in the Library of
Congress' Local Legacies program.

The story also was recounted in a 1969
biography by Allan Eckert. According to
the book, Blue Jacket was the son of white
settlers who was adopted by the Shawnee
when a hunting party came upon the
17-year-old boy in a West Virginia woods
in 1771. The Shawnees re-named young
Marmaduke Van Swearingen Blue Jacket
because he was wearing a blue coat when he
willingly joined their tribe.

The new DNA research raises questions
about that theory.

Wright State biologist Dan Krane tested
DNA samples from five descendants of Blue
Jacket and five descendants of Mr. Van
Swearingen. Preliminary results suggest
the two men were not the same.

The DNA also suggests that Blue Jacket was
American Indian, Mr. Krane said, but it
doesn't rule out the possibility that he
was white.

Mr. Krane received the DNA samples from
Robert Van Trees, who is not relat ed to
Blue Jacket or Mr. Van Swearingen but grew
interested in the story while researching
his own family tree.

The method of DNA testing used by Mr.
Krane is reliable, said Carl Huether, a
University of Cincinnati biology
professor. But to help answer the question
of Blue Jacket's ethnicity, researchers
also should compare DNA of his descendants
with that of descendants from his Shawnee
tribe, Mr. Huether said.

The author Allan Eckert, who lives in
Bellefontaine, was traveling and
unavailable for comment. Alexander Kaye,
who has published Mr. Eckert's books, said
Mr. Eckert got his information from family
records and did “exhaustive research.”

Historical accounts of a mighty Indian
chief really being white don't surprise
Miami University history professor Andrew
Cayton.

“Especially in the 1800s, historians had
to deal with people like Tecumseh and Blue
Jacket, and they found much to be admired
in these men that conflicted with their
general sense that the Indians were
racially inferior,” he said. “One way you
can deal with that is if you have these
Indian leaders who are sterling examples
of leadership and intelligence, you say
that somewhere, they must have had white
blood in them.”

Until now, Mr. Van Trees has used birth
dates and other documentation that he
claims show Blue Jacket couldn't have been
Marmaduke Van Swearingen. He said he has
found no record of Mr. Van Swearingen,
although he did uncover a Marmaduke
Swearingen, born in 1763 in western
Pennsylvania. He disappeared, and his
family never saw him again.

Mr. Van Trees also claims to have tracked
down the origin of the
Blue-Jacket-as-white-man story. He says it
was first published in 1877 in an Ohio
newspaper.

In light of recent DNA evidence, the
Library of Congress has added a disclaimer
to its Local Legacies Web site saying that
the story depicted in Xenia's Blue Jacket
production is under dispute.

But the Xenia play won't change, said
Scott Galbraith, the show's director of
marketing and public relations.

“We're not espousing to be a history book.
This is theater,” he said. “What we do is
utilize historical elements to tell
stories of humanity. That's what theater
is about. It's not about biology.”